HiVision millimeter-wave radar for enhanced vision systems in civil and military transport aircraft

This paper presents a guideline to meet the requirements of forward looking sensors of an Enhanced Vision System (EVS)for both military and civil transport aircraft. It gives an update of a previous publication [1] with special respect to airborneapplication. For civil transport aircraft an imaging mm-wave radar is proposed as the vision sensor for an enhanced visionsystem. For military air transport an additional high-performance weather radar should be combined with the mm-waveradar to enable advanced situational awareness, e.g. spot-SAR or air to air operation. For tactical navigation ( e.g. low level flight operations and real-time correlation with electronic maps ) the mm-wave radar is useful due to its ranging capabilities. To meet these requirements the HiVision radar was developed and tested. It uses a robust concept of electronicbeam steering and will meet the strict price constraints oftransport aircraft. Advanced image processing and high frequencytechniques are currently developed to enhance the perfonnance of both the radar image and integration techniques. Theadvantageous FMCW waveform even enables a sensor with low probability of intercept (LPI) and a high resitance againstjammer. The 1997 highlight will be the optimizing ofthe sensor and flight trials with an enhanced radar demonstrator.Keywords: millimeter wave radar, imaging sensor, low visibility, enhanced vision system, military air transport, BUD,autonomous navigation, situational awareness, approach, landing